October 30, 2006

Here's some feeds you may want to subscribe to if you're trying to keep up with the goings-on of the PR industry:

Prompt PR - UK / US tech PR agency blogStirlig PR - Derek Hodge, lecturer in Public Relations at the University of StirlingClogger - my meat-space co-colleague and PR industry cynic, Clogger, is back griefingExpat Ed Lee is now at iStudio Canada (blog) a sister agency to Fleishman, where he used to work Screaming Headlines - Pete Wilby, Lecturer in Journalism, PR and media and cultural theory at UCE Birmingham

October 27, 2006

The first time I've seen an entire front cover dedicated to the issue of blogging in a national paper.

Today's Independent leads with the story: Martyrs of the web. It's about the world’s jailed bloggers. The cover story looks at bloggers from China, Iran, Tunisia and Vietnam who have been jailed for up to 10 years for blogging.

October 26, 2006

"Welcome to the new and improved Windows Vista blog. A few months back,
I pushed our team to bring the blog from the blogging Dark Ages into
something a little more modern. The blog back then wasn't quite doing
the job."

It's a huge makeover, says Cybernet Technology News. Other noteable reviews here and here. I think it looks pretty but it's not very functional. No trackbacks or widgets.

Web 2.0 blog Techcrunch had its official UK launch in London [Thursday] night at a swanky bash attended by the capital’s digerati, many of whom were on the scene this time 10 years ago when Web 1.0 was just getting going.

October 22, 2006

Blogger Neville Hobson just emailed me to say he's teamed up with three like-minded individuals to launch a venture named Crayon. Their office will be in the virtual world of my client Second Life, and the launch will be on 26th October on Crayonville Island. Neville says Crayon is "both a real and a virtual" marketing agency.

PUBLIC RELATIONS FIRM EDELMAN, WHICH last
week pledged to be more transparent in its involvement with
client-related blogs, Thursday revealed it is behind two more 'flogs,'
or fake blogs, created on behalf of Wal-Mart.

Until the new disclosures, both blogs appeared to have been created and
contributed to by independent supporters of the big box retailer, an
Edelman client.

One blog appears on the home page of Working Families for Wal-Mart, the
allegedly grassroots advocacy group formed by Edelman last December,
which is "committed to fostering open and honest dialogue...that
conveys the positive contributions of Wal-Mart to working families."
The second blog is on WFWM's subsidiary site Paid Critics.

The Paid Critics blog is devoted to "exposing" links between unions and
other vested interests that are "smearing Wal-Mart" through the media.
Until yesterday, blog entries on both WFWM and Paid Critics were
uncredited. Thursday, bylines were added to blog posts "in response to
comments and emails."

Last week, the travel blog "Wal-Marting Across America" was shut down
following revelations that it was the work of two writers paid by WFWM.

As a result of the new transparency, every entry on the blogs is now
credited to one of three contributors: Miranda, Brian or Kate. A click
on these single monikers reveals biographies of Edelman employees
Miranda Gill, Brian McNeill and Kate Marshall, whose clients include
Working Families for Wal-Mart, the sites say.

While noting that he was speaking in generalities and not to this
specific situation, Dave Balter, president of the Boston word-of-mouth
marketing firm BzzAgent, said: "Even if you're doing the right thing
but you know you're going to deceive people, you have to do everything
to make sure it's completely transparent, and any tactic that crosses
that line you're doing a disservice to the brand [and] the consumer."

The spokesperson for WFWM, Edelman employee Donna Lewis-Johnson, said
the company was now being completely transparent. She said WFWM is a
client of Edelman separate from its Wal-Mart account, but could not
confirm that WFWM pays Edelman for its work. She said Edelman's
employees make up some but not all of the WFWM staff. She said that
WFWM accepts funding from Wal-Mart, but did not know how much.

In a May New York Times
article about WFWM, a member of the group's steering committee, Martha
Montoya, said she was not aware of any financing that group received
outside of Wal-Mart.

A spokesperson for Wal-Mart referred all questions to WFWM.

One observer questioned whether once a flog becomes transparent, its original purpose is rendered moot.

"Once you make this kind of revelation, you need to question whether
[the strategy] is even effective anymore," said Virginia Miracle,
director of word-of-mouth marketing for Brains on Fire, in Greenville,
SC. "This is a very difficult time. As the media has exploded, the
ethical guidelines have not been growing at the same rate."

Another critic called the situation "ridiculous," and pointed out the
innate contradiction and paradoxical dilemma Edelman is facing.

"Doesn't anybody at Edelman see the irony behind having their own paid
critics writing Wal-Mart's Paid Critics blog?" asks Sean Carton, a
blogger, author of eight books about technology and the Internet, and
chief strategy officer for Baltimore interactive consultancy idfive.
"This was a brilliant idea, in its way, but it was evil and they got
caught. It was old media thinking in the new media world, and you can't
get away with that [stuff] anymore."